{"id":28245,"date":"2024-09-24T17:07:01","date_gmt":"2024-09-24T17:07:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bitcoins-101.com\/2024\/09\/24\/building-lnbits-the-wordpress-for-your-bitcoin-lightning-node-with-ben-arc\/"},"modified":"2024-09-24T17:07:01","modified_gmt":"2024-09-24T17:07:01","slug":"building-lnbits-the-wordpress-for-your-bitcoin-lightning-node-with-ben-arc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitcoins-101.com\/2024\/09\/24\/building-lnbits-the-wordpress-for-your-bitcoin-lightning-node-with-ben-arc\/","title":{"rendered":"Building LNbits \u2014 the WordPress for Your Bitcoin Lightning Node \u2014 With Ben Arc"},"content":{"rendered":"

Company Name:<\/strong> LNbits<\/p>\n

Founders:<\/strong> Ben Arc<\/p>\n

Date Founded:<\/strong> Project: 2019 | Company: 2022<\/p>\n

Location of Headquarters:<\/strong> Fully remote (most developers based in Europe)<\/p>\n

Amount of Bitcoin Held in Treasury:<\/strong> N\/A<\/p>\n

Number of Employees:<\/strong> 6 (+ \u201ca couple dozen other developers\u201d)<\/p>\n

Website:<\/strong> https:\/\/lnbits.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Public or Private?<\/strong> Private<\/p>\n

Five years ago, Ben Arc first had the vision for LNbits<\/a> \u2014 free and open-source software that works with any Lightning Network funding source and offers a suite of extensions<\/a> for both personal and business use cases.<\/p>\n

The vision for the project came to him in what he describes as a flash of inspiration.<\/p>\n

\u201cChristian Russo, the developer of the RaspiBlitz<\/a>, had come down to visit and I remember sitting in a little wash cottage where he was staying, and I just sat on the sofa and I kept going, \u2018LNbits, LNbits, LNbits,\u2019\u201d Arc told Bitcoin Magazine. \u201cAnd then I was like, \u2018I think I’m going to make this project where it can be set on top of any funding source and you’ll get this common API and then have some wallets and stuff.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Soon after, Arc, a Bitcoiner based in Wales, began working on the first LNbits project, a point of sale (PoS) extension for his friend J\u00f6rg Platzer, owner of the now defunct Berlin-based Bitcoin bar Room 77<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe managed to get the PoS in the bar, and J\u00f6rg was amazed how well it worked,\u201d recounted Arc.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat he really wanted was like an accountancy layer from which you could export CSV and then import it into different wallets, so you could have different PoSs and they\u2019d have different wallets. None of that stuff was possible in the node implementations at the time,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, we needed to build that for J\u00f6rg, and then I needed to build something so I didn\u2019t have to keep replicating work when it came to creating different versions of projects.\u201d<\/p>\n

That something was LNbits.<\/p>\n

The LNbits Developer Team Forms<\/h2>\n

In the years that followed, some of the brightest developers in the Bitcoin and Lightning space gravitated to LNbits, making contributions that would help put the project on the map.<\/p>\n

These developers included Calle, creator of Cashu<\/a>; fiatjaf<\/a>, creator of Nostr<\/a>; Pavol Rusnak<\/a>, co-founder of Satoshi Labs<\/a> and a host of other notable names and pseudonyms including but not limited to dni<\/a>, Eneko<\/a>, Vlad Stan<\/a>, supertestnet<\/a> and Black Coffee<\/a>. (Arc also shared that the initial design for Nostr \u201cpartly came out of LNbits\u201d and that Cashu \u201cwas an LNbits project for such a long time.\u201d)<\/p>\n

This makes the LNbits developer team the Wu-Tang Clan of Bitcoin and Lightning developers \u2014 an \u00fcber-talented supergroup whose members do groundbreaking work both together and on their own.<\/p>\n

And if the LNbits developer team is Wu-Tang, then Arc is the RZA, the head of the group who organizes things and helps set up business deals. That said, the LNbits team came together less because of a master plan by Arc and more out of practicality.<\/p>\n

\u201cLNbits came out of necessity because a lot of us were replicating work,\u201d said Arc. <\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of us were having to make all these different versions of our projects for all these different node implementations,\u201d he added, making the point that the primary motivation behind LNbits was to reduce redundancy.<\/p>\n

The team really came together when Arc learned that major entities in the space were beginning to use the software. At an Adopting Bitcoin conference in El Salvador, Arc bumped into some of the members of the team from IBEX<\/a>, who mentioned that they were using LNbits.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey said, \u2018We love our LNbits. We’re using it for our products in our bank,\u2019\u201d recalled Arc.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I was like, \u2018Well, it was really buggy beta software. Please don’t use it in your bank,\u201d he added with a laugh.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt that point, everyone who was working on LNBits was like, \u2018Okay, wow, people are using this thing. I think we now need to make a more stable version that people can use and access, particularly if they’re putting it in their software stacks.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Setting Up LNbits, The Company<\/h2>\n

Arc\u2019s interaction with the IBEX team made him realize that the time had come to turn LNbits into a proper business.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had to set up a company, which could then pay developers to work on LNbits,\u201d said Arc.<\/p>\n

Arc paralleled the relationship between LNbits the open-source software and LNbits the company to WordPress.org and WordPress.com. WordPress.org is the company that manages and develops WordPress.com, which is open-source software.<\/p>\n

LNbits and WordPress are also similar in that anyone can develop extensions that give WordPress-powered websites extra functionality just as anyone can develop extensions for LNbits.<\/p>\n

While it\u2019s easy to incentivize development in LNbits\u2019 extension marketplace by allowing developers to charge for the extension they create, getting developers to work on the software itself is more difficult. Hence, Arc set up the company.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy setting up the company, we have some funds to put into the development work, which isn’t so glamorous, isn’t so fun,\u201d said Arc of how LNbits approaches its software development.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou’re less likely to kind of get people doing that on a free and open source project.\u201d<\/p>\n

Funding LNbits<\/h2>\n

Arc initially had some trepidation about telling the LNbits developer team that he was going to be setting up the business, though he was pleasantly surprised by their reaction when he shared the news.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was very nervous with our free and open source community to break the news to them that we were going to set up a business to help fund development and stuff,\u201d said Arc. \u201cBut when we told them, they were all super excited about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

LNbits has since raised approximately $1 million in investment from VCs, an amount and an arrangement with which Arc is comfortable.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really like private capital when it’s beholden to a free and open source project,\u201d said Arc.<\/p>\n

He went on to describe how LNbits would have had to have raised between $10 and $20 million if it had built LNbits as a proprietary piece of software. Building it organically has been far cheaper, and building with the Bitcoin community in mind all along has had benefits, as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo have this piece of software and then also have this community, which you’re kind of beholden to, stops you from making bad decisions,\u201d explained Arc.<\/p>\n

Coming Out Of Beta<\/h2>\n

While LNbits has become more widely used over the last five years, it\u2019s remained in beta all the while. Arc has been in no rush to officially release a product that he didn\u2019t feel was stable enough.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Bitcoin, a lot of projects come out of beta too early,\u201d explained Arc.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s just kind of a sad and scary reality that they want people to trust the software which they’ve developed, but we didn’t want to do that. We really wanted to be very conservative,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

In preparation to release version one, LNbits has incorporated some funding and swapping services.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the last release, we added PhoenixD<\/a> as a funding source for LNbits,\u201d began Arc, describing the server equivalent of the Phoenix Wallet<\/a> for mobile.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe added the Breez SDK<\/a>. We’re using the Boltz<\/a> swapping service for trustless Atomic Swaps<\/a> in and out of Liquid<\/a>. So, it means you can actually fund your LNbits with a Liquid Wallet, which absolutely blows my brain,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

The Future of LNbits<\/h2>\n

Right now, Arc seems to simply be focused on getting version one live and then continuing to fine tune it so that people and businesses can rely on it in a professional capacity. Arc wants to be sure the team is focused so that it can \u201cdebug on the fly\u201d if and when necessary.<\/p>\n

Arc and the LNbits team also want to create more educational content around showing people how to use LNbits as well as how to create their own LNbits extensions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was a success of the project early on,\u201d said Arc. \u201cWe just did a lot of educational content and everyone was like, \u2018Okay, cool, I can try and build something on this thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Arc also seems excited about how LNbits can further integrate with Nostr (he\u2019s been toying around with running the Internet of Things (IoT) over Nostr), the most exciting part about the future for LNbits is its limitlessness.<\/p>\n

Put another way, in just five years, it has attracted brilliant developers who\u2019ve created the earliest iterations of their revolutionary technologies (e.g., Cashu, Nostr) via LNbits, and this isn\u2019t to mention all of the innovative LNbits extensions developers have created.<\/p>\n

The question now is who develops via LNbits in the next five years and what do they create?<\/p>\n

While Arc doesn\u2019t claim to know, he is surely excited about what comes next, especially in the wake of version one going live.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce we’re version one, that’s when the real fun begins,\u201d said Arc. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe’re starting to see glimpses of it, because we can just build fun extensions for functionality and build out product services,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat really is when the fun begins for the project.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Company Name: LNbits Founders: Ben Arc Date Founded: Project: 2019 | Company: 2022 Location of Headquarters: Fully remote (most developers based in Europe) Amount of Bitcoin Held in Treasury: N\/A Number of Employees: 6 (+ \u201ca couple dozen other developers\u201d) Website: https:\/\/lnbits.com\/ Public or Private? Private Five years ago, Ben Arc first had the vision […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crypto-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoins-101.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28245"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoins-101.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoins-101.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoins-101.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoins-101.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28245\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoins-101.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoins-101.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoins-101.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}